


Severest Critic

by methylviolet10b



Category: Basil of Baker Street - All Media Types, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Prompt Fic, Watson's Woes July Writing Prompts 2017, vague mentions of truly horrible crimes but nothing graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-07 04:08:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11615553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/methylviolet10b/pseuds/methylviolet10b
Summary: Basil is not so easily fooled. Written for JWP #25: Healer's Choice.





	Severest Critic

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Okay, not quite so silly and pointless. A follow-on to [Boiled Beef and Carrots](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11605824). And absolutely no beta. This was written in a huge rush. You have been warned.
> 
> Author's Notes: Written for JWP #25: Healer's Choice: One person Watson chose not to save. The last time we had this prompt, [Watson faced a conflict](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4309629).

Dawson’s little diversion about the quality of the cooking putting off his appetite was utter nonsense. I have seen him stolidly munch his way through far worse fare without complaint and without ill effect on his person. That he thought _I_ could be fooled by such a flimsy charade was as symptomatic of his trouble as his weight loss, subdued manner, and troubled, broken sleep.  
  
My dear David often characterizes himself as a simple mouse. This is not so. He is brave and honourable and dedicated. He is also his own severest critic. I have seen how badly it hurts him when he does his very best, and yet loses a patient.  
  
How much worse, then, the pain he inflicts on himself, when he does nothing to save a patient?   
  
I could tell him a thousand times that he could have done nothing else given the circumstances. Yes, the mouse – a middle-aged, well-off gentlemouse who seemed all charity and goodness (and mild hypochondria) on the outside, but was one of the most depraved miscreants I have ever had the mousefortune to encounter – was Dawson’s patient. He was under Dawson’s care for a supposedly sore paw when Dawson, ever kind, noticed the strange lassitude of his servants, and the absence of the two half-wild mice-of-all-work he’d seen the week before.  
  
He mentioned it to me as a matter of passing interest. He did not know the case that had been brought to me just that morning, of young street mice lured away from their families by the promise of regular work, never to be seen again. He could never have imagined the horrors his patient was inflicting on those poor young ones, the diabolical maze of traps and death to which he consigned them.  
  
He barely escaped with his life. He came out of that maze with a half-dead child in his arms, scarcely ahead of the terrible serpent that had been one of the many terrors of that place. He only had the chance to save the child because he’d forced the knowledge of his whereabouts out of his patient, whose legs had been crushed in the trap he’d meant to trap myself and Dawson in.  
  
He did not stay to tend to his patient after he’d squealed out what we needed to know. He did not try to lift the terrible steel bar that kept him pinned there. He simply followed me in our desperate attempt to save others far more innocent than he. Only after the kits were safe did Watson go back. And by then it was too late.   
  
No, there was nothing to reproach himself with in my estimation, and doubtless in the eyes of the Yard and of common mousedom. But David Dawson is no common mouse. He is a doctor, and a gentlemouse of his word, and he took an oath to always serve his patients, to do no harm. When he cannot live up to his own impossibly high standards, he suffers.  
  
I do what I can to comfort him, but distraction, action, and time, not sympathy, will provide his true cure. The opportunity to sample an exquisite cheese or two is just an extra temptation to help ensure he never really questions why I would take such a silly-sounding case.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted July 25, 2017.


End file.
